Trial of Intentions

by Peter Orullian

  “Certainly. And also certainly the most important discovery you will ever make in Aubade Grove.” He stepped forward, coming very near Tahn. “You see, Tahn, with the College of Philosophy, it’s not whether or not you can prove Continuity is a real thing.” Darius paused, lending weight to what he meant to say. “It’s whether or not your use of it is rational and justified. Like killing a child to save us from the monsters.”

  This time it was Darius’s men who laughed. Tahn’s anger flared—clearly Darius had spies. “Why don’t we worry about the philosophy argument when the time comes. Here,” he said, proffering his pitch pad, “would you like a rub?”

  The loudest laugh came from Myles, Tahn’s team philosopher. Darius silenced Myles with a withering stare. “It may be conventional for a member of our college to counsel the Succession arguer,” Darius said with a biting tone, “but it earns you no credit with me.” Myles dropped his eyes to his mirror.

  “Still with the accounting language?” Tahn interjected. “Well then, can I get some credit with you? For my pine sap, maybe?” He was trying hard to diffuse the situation. He’d meant this to be a relaxing evening, and didn’t want any trouble, particularly here in Shem’s shop. The lenses all around were in a delicate state.

  Darius leaned forward. “I don’t think you understand the League’s position on this.”

  Tahn looked down at the dual insignias on Darius’s garment. “I watched leaguemen burn an innocent woman.” He let that hang in the air a good long time. “I fought leaguemen for poisoning a child.” He let that hang, too. “I don’t give an absent gods damn what your position is.” Then he smiled as dismissively as he was able. But even to him it seemed a grim smile.

  Everyone had stopped polishing.

  Shem stood. “I’m going to ask you to leave.”

  Darius seemed not to hear Shem’s invitation. He smiled at Tahn. “As before, I’m here to see Tahn in a formal capacity. As Aubade Grove’s ranking leagueman, I’m putting an end to your bid for Succession,” he said, his voice gone cool. “There are many reasons to believe you’re a fugitive. Among them, your unlawful escape from your prison cell in Recityv, where you were being held for interfering with the hanging of a leagueman. And the reports we have of you killing innocent children, while inconclusive, are ongoing. In the meantime, I’ll have to restrict your access to college libraries and towers, and am considering assigning you a permanent guardian … for the safety of our community.”

  “You have your facts wrong,” Tahn said, standing.

  Darius waved away his objections. “Besides all this, and before we expend any further Grove resources on Succession, we’ll want to feel confident that you aren’t putting forward an argument … for the wrong reasons.”

  Tahn had lost the feeling he’d come to Snellens to find. And his hope of stopping a war was being torn away based on rumor and distortions of the truth. It was preposterous. And maddening. Perhaps Darius just needed to understand Tahn’s purpose.

  “Continuity and Resonance will help us understand the Veil. Which will help us figure out how to make it strong again. And stop whatever would cross that barrier to harm us.” He offered it all as evenly as he could, his blood pumping.

  Darius’s brow went up in an expression of incredulity. But not surprise. He knew what Tahn’s argument was going to be. “This is your Succession plan? This is what Aubade Grove is going to be asked to consider? Do you have any idea how antiquated you sound? How this demeans all of us here, who are trying to push thought forward? Real science?” The philosopher shook his head. “No, Tahn. Even if you weren’t someone who’d escaped by dubious means from the pits of Solath Mahnus. Even if we couldn’t hold you for killing children in the name of war. Even then, I wouldn’t let this Succession proceed.”

  Tahn took a deep breath. “You don’t have that power. I have a sponsor for Succession. The savants will hear it.”

  Darius’s own smile at that was answer enough. Darius did have the power. Tahn’s mood darkened. He saw in his mind the faces of friends, thirty-seven—what they felt, what they did—when the Quiet stripped them of hope. He saw Tamara lying by a stream.

  And there stirred in him a bit of Resonance, not unlike what he’d experienced days ago in the tower dome, fighting a Quiet man.

  Tahn stepped forward, bringing his face close to Darius’s. “You will wait for Succession,” he said softly, slowly, moderating his own anger the best he could. “Because if you don’t, I will show you, personally, what I intend to prove. And it will end your doubts about the Quiet.”

  He couldn’t be sure, but Tahn thought the room fell into shadow then. Like something passed before the many lamps set around the workshop. Or perhaps it was a greying in his own eyes, as he focused on Darius to the exclusion of everything else … the way he did when he needed to find something with which … to resonate.

  The League philosopher stared back a long moment, undaunted, and said, “Teach me.”

  Darius let that settle between them. A challenge. An invitation.

  Tahn looked at this man who meant to block him, who might cause a great widening of the Scar and everything that followed from such a widening.

  Then Darius added, “Because we all know what happened to the last Successionist to argue Continuity.”

  Tahn shot a look at Rithy, whose expression turned sour with remembrance. In that moment, his last bit of restraint melted away.

  What came started like a cold ache down low in his gut. Then it filled him with a warm rush like blood returning to a numbed limb. Unlike when he drew an imagined arrow and let fly a part of himself, this time Tahn’s Resonance was like the pluck of a tightly drawn string on a broken, unmusical instrument. He instinctively sought the crippling memory of Tamara in all its fullness. Funneled it into a pure feeling of helplessness and regret and reached out to something inside Darius that could know such a feeling.

  Like a pot boiling over, the man before him drew a hundred instant connections to the Resonance Tahn was causing, and began to shudder. Tahn could see him hurting deep down. He could feel the ache that was spreading in him like a disease, quieting doubts, quieting resolve.

  And Tahn kept on. Things he’d suffered. The ugliness he’d seen from the League. It was all swept into the Resonance he forced inside Darius. He followed it, let it grow inside himself, too.

  Only vaguely was he aware of how cankered everything around him began to feel. As though the Resonance had grown beyond what he felt or caused Darius to feel. And only vaguely was he aware that he was being shaken, that the smell of pitch was strong in his nose. As though it was being used as a strong-smelling waking salt.

  But he was far inside the feeling. Unsettling as it was, he didn’t want to let it go. A morbid desire to see it through had seized him. Carefree delight tripped along with his blackest anger.

  Tahn, can you hear me?

  He would drop this man with the amplification of his own suffering.

  Tahn?

  Then he was seeing Shem before him, the man’s hands on his shoulders—one holding a pine-tar pitch pad. Shem was speaking, asking Tahn if he could hear him.

  Tahn shook his head, and pushed Shem gently aside. A few paces back stood Darius, staring, a guarded look in his eye. But not an acquiescent one. Not completely.

  Tahn took a few steps toward him. “I will honor Succession, and make my argument the best I can. If I’m beaten in the discourse theaters, then I am beaten.” He pointed a finger. “But it will not happen anywhere else. Not here. And not anywhere my Succession team will be. Until Succession ends, one way or the other.”

  Darius stared back at him, firm, but thinking—Tahn could see it in the philosopher’s eyes. “Is this what you did to those kids near Naltus?”

  Tahn didn’t miss a beat. “No. Them I let die.”

  Darius looked around the room, then turned and left. As soon as the shop’s front door closed, Tahn dropped to his knees. The shivering he’d barely kept under control n
ow wracked his body.

  “What in all my skies just happened?” Shem asked.

  Rithy was there fast, wrapping her coat around his shoulders. “Tahn? What was that?”

  He looked at her, having no way to explain that proving Resonance had begun to mean two things. At least two: strengthening the Veil, and understanding his own connection to Resonance itself.

  When he thought he could move on his own, he got to his chair, took up his pitch pad, and continued polishing the mirror. “Please,” he invited, “let’s not let it ruin this night. We deserve some distraction.”

  “In the name of dead gods, you don’t think that was a distraction?” Rithy exclaimed.

  A few low chuckles followed.

  He looked them each in the eye. They deserved to know. “A few nights ago, in the astronomy tower, I was attacked by a Velle.”

  There were gasps.

  “I knew it was more than your clumsiness,” Rithy remarked.

  “At least I think it was a Velle,” Tahn went on, shaking his head. “I’m not certain. But whatever it was, it could render like one. It could … control and direct Resonance. And so, it would seem … can I.”

  A heavy silence stretched in the little mirror shop. Incredulous looks.

  Tahn nodded and managed a small laugh. “That’s what I think, too. But, if nothing else, the stranger got me thinking about Resonance in new ways. I believe it’s helping our Succession argument.”

  “How?” asked Myles, his team philosopher.

  Tahn gave Myles a thoughtful look. “Made me think about the sound a person has. Made me think about ambivalence. Made me realize any two things can be brought into resonance.” He looked over at Rithy. “Which will help us with our clock demonstration tomorrow in the discourse theater, won’t it?”

  “Is this thing still hanging around?” Rithy asked. The visitor in the astronomy dome.

  Tahn took a deep breath. “Haven’t seen him, but yeah, I suspect he is. Leaving me alone for now, though. So, please, let’s try to enjoy just polishing a damn mirror for a few hours.”

  Nervous laughter turned easy. And slowly, the others picked up their pitch pads. Soon enough, there was idle chat as they prepared mirrors and lenses for skyglasses big and small.

  Tahn, though, battled back an unsettling thought. I might have killed him. And before he could try to fool himself that what had happened was Resonance doing something to him, maybe taking control of his senses, Tahn stopped himself. That would be a lie. He’d been aware the whole time. Deeply aware. And if Darius came again, and made the same threat, he might finish what he’d started.

  So, aware? Yes. But not in control. He wondered if coming to understand Resonance would prove more dangerous to him. Since it seemed what he had inside to resonate with was little more than the Scar.

  He took a long, stuttering breath, still feeling chilled. Looking down, he noticed his mirror had a crack in it. Several, in fact. He used it as an excuse to move near the kiln, its bed of coals a medley of bright red and orange, and good medicine for the cold inside him. There he set to work on a new mirror, one with a fresh coat of silver.

  Eventually, the rhythms of polishing pushed troubling thoughts from his mind, leaving him and his Succession team a mild last evening before Succession truly began.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE

  Gathering Old Stories

  There’s a currency that all people share, that all people care about—stories. The ones they hold close and share only when nothing else matters. A smart merchant gathers these the way a fool gathers hats.

  —The unwritten and unacknowledged commodity of the Storalaith House of merchants, a generational principle of their brokerage

  Thin shadows fell across the room as Helaina slipped from her bed to the cold stone floor. The soft glow of a single lamp lit the chamber, where only Artixan remained. The others were gone, preparing for their departures from Recityv. Her old friend, sitting in the corner, looked very tired and very old as he sat vigil over her.

  “You should get some sleep,” she chastened mildly.

  He gave her a weak smile, and nodded. “There’ll be time to sleep when my body lies warmly in the earth.”

  “Nonsense. I’m doing fine. And you look like a bit of death.” She limped over to where he sat in a deep high-back chair. “Besides, we shouldn’t stay in this room long.”

  He nodded understanding. “The map of private chambers in Solath Mahnus is in the regent’s High Office. Roth is likely to avail himself of its secrets, isn’t he?” He looked up at her with anxious eyes. “When did I start being able to anticipate the actions of a murderer?”

  She couldn’t help but give a small laugh. “You’ve stood too long at this old lady’s side not to. And thank you for that.”

  “What’s your idea?” he asked with a heavy sigh.

  “I have to go out briefly.” She moved to a small table and drew out a short sheet of parchment and set to it with ink and pen. She rubbed her hands briskly before beginning to write. “On my way, I’ll slip an anonymous letter under the Sodality’s rear door, knock, and leave before they answer.”

  “And your letter?”

  “To First Sodalist Palon. Him alone. You need to be in their protective care while we’re away.”

  He struggled to the edge of his chair. “I’m going with you to Y’Tilat Mor.”

  “No, my friend. I’m old, but you’re ancient.”

  That fetched a genuine laugh. “I won’t argue that. But do you think you should go without me? Just let me rest. I can make the trip.”

  She shook her head. “I’ll have Grant at my side. He’s a bit rough, but can you think of anyone better? Even you?”

  Artixan conceded with a smile.

  “Besides, if you’re strong enough to travel, you should consider going with Vendanj to Estem Salo.” She shot him a quick glance of emphasis.

  “Because you worry even if his intentions are right, he’ll offend the Randeur. Put our path sideways.” Artixan nodded as he said it.

  “I’m not sure why we verbalize anymore; we always seem to know one another’s thoughts.” She paused a moment, grinning. “Which should distress me more than it does.”

  He didn’t share her smile this time. “If I don’t see you again before you leave, remember that the Mors protect their privacy with vigor. And if they get news you’re no longer the regent, you won’t have the protection of authority. You’ll just be a lone woman asking for their most cherished, most secret knowledge.”

  “That’s a bit stark for a good-bye,” she said, knowing she’d miss his pitch-perfect advice while she was gone. “But you’re right. That’s why I’m taking this nighttime stroll. There’s something I’ll need when I solicit the Mors. As for you, I suspect the Sodality will be here within the hour to move you to their daily strong room.”

  “I know the rotation,” Artixan said. “It’s close. I’ll get there myself. And tell them to be discreet. A pile of sodalists will be a signal to the League.”

  She finished her note, folded it into an envelope, sealed it with a few drops of wax, and wrote Palon’s name across the front. She then shrugged into a heavy cloak with a deep cowl, and turned to face him.

  “Pull the cowl up farther,” he advised. “No one needs to see that face of yours.”

  She smiled and crossed to where he sat, bending down to embrace him around the shoulders. “Take care for yourself. And if you really are able to travel, get out of this hell. Go with Vendanj.”

  His nod told her it wasn’t likely. His family was here. He’d want to be close if they needed him. “You’re as uncompromising as he is, you know.”

  She didn’t have to ask to know he meant Grant. “There’s a happy thought.”

  “Just something to think about.” He sat back in his chair, clearly still exhausted. When he looked up at her again, his face showed a contented sort of thoughtfulness. “It’s been an honor to serve you, Helaina. You’re the finest person I know. A bi
t leathery at times. But more calfskin than sow’s ear.”

  She had to work hard to keep herself from laughing too loudly. “And you, my friend, are nothing but dignity and selflessness, miraculously evident in the body of a man.”

  “We’re two doting old fools, is what we are.” He waved a hand for her to be on her way. “Get going before we start competing over incontinence.”

  “Just one more thing,” said Helaina, putting a hand aside his face. “Thank you. Thank you for restoring my son’s life all those years ago when he came still.”

  He was shaking his head. “You’ve thanked me for this—”

  “It was a breach of your Sheason oath,” she went on. “A serious one, I’ve learned. I asked, and you said yes. You gave me my son back, knowing what it might mean for you. I don’t know many … thank you.”

  He placed his own hand atop hers and gave her a warm smile. For a long moment their good-byes came in silence. She thought she could distantly hear the tumult of civil conflict in her city. But she’d have to navigate through it. There was one visit she needed to make, one thing she needed to retrieve.

  She kissed Artixan’s forehead, and moved to the rear of the room. She couldn’t simply walk out the front gates of Solath Mahnus. She would need a less conspicuous exit. And as regent, she had some few secrets that she shared with no one. They weren’t even listed on the documents in her office.

  She moved to the far corner, where a high table stood with small statuary, some books, and an oil lamp. After quietly picking up the lamp, she crawled beneath the table and triggered a false panel in the wall. Beyond it lay a secret, narrow system of corridors connecting many of the chambers throughout Solath Mahnus. The air inside smelled of dry stone and rodent droppings. She lit the lamp and began to wind her way through the passageways.

  In some places she had to duck low, even crawl, to pass. And more than once she slipped into a sideways shuffle to negotiate extremely tight sections of a corridor. Stairways between floors were rare; mostly she climbed very old ladders made from wood that creaked beneath her slight weight.